Porridge

TWO POEMS – Simon French

For the good of the country we claimed their land & property. It was necessary for the people.

ONE POEM – Helen Ferris

In the southern heat,
giddiness spread in a slick of sweat.
A stale and sweet smell embraced the girls
as they danced and danced
and would not stop dancing.

ONE POEM – Balfour McBride

They rose up overnight
like a hallucination—
misshapen, pock-marked, deformed
littering the lawn in the dozens.

ONE POEM – Emily Tee

and there, by the weekend-quiet school, at the edge of the pavement, was the mouse
lying on its side, a small trickle of blood / from its open mouth

ONE POEM – Susan Shea

we can sit next to each other
looking out in the same direction
at our life smudges
together

ONE POEM – Carolyn Oulton

You offer me tea (a cardigan, story)
and someone else to make it,
which we all
pretend not to notice.

TWO POEMS – Catherine Redford

The air is suddenly sweet-smoked and humming,
and I’m back in the incense-wreathed
Lanes of 90s Brighton

FICTION | The Signmaker — David Hartley

They have agreed that this is an emergency. Signs need not be heeded in an emergency, they’re quite sure.

TWO POEMS – Billie Manning

The plane goes to the gym every morning
before work and holds that plank.

TWO POEMS – Carl Griffin

Now I’m a chrysalis,
neither caterpillar boy
nor butterfly man.

COMFORT FOODS // On Rissóis — Samantha Denny

Fried dough dishes are a universal constant.

THREE POEMS – Livia Franchini

The colour revealed itself like crab meat
only a wound, something to lick clean

Porridge Books of the Year 2023

From Prince Harry’s TMI memoir to Barbara Kingslover’s Appalachian bildungsroman, the team at Porridge share their favourite novels and non-fiction reads of 2023.

ONE POEM – Elizabeth Chadwick Pywell

I imagined the horse bolting so it did,
skidded along the canyon’s edge while I watched.

ONE POEM – Aysar Ghassan

There
cars are white,
the sun is not for bathing under.

ONE POEM – Rebecca Wheatley

She would never allow a condiment
without a saucer or a spoon,
tea without a pot,
a pop sock and skirt.

She travels the world, storms the Venice Biennale, exhibits at the Guggenheim, Tate, Pompidou – you name it, parties with the grimy glitterati in LA, Madrid, São Paulo, breaks a Sotheby’s sale record and dazzles the fawning curators and collectors at every chandeliered benefit dinner.

ONE POEM – Nora Nadjarian

I covered my eyes and my
tears tasted of metal.

COMFORT FOODS // After the surgery my body longs for by Janet Bi Li Chan

gluey congee cooked with
yellow ginger
salted pork
thousand-year-old eggs
constantly stirred to make sure
it doesn’t stick to the bottom

COMFORT FOODS // A Tamalada by M.A. Dubbs

Mom’s in charge and tells us to watch how it’s done,
tucking and folding
until she holds above our heads, like a baptized child,
our exemplar tamale
“Just like that!” ¡Perfecto!

Angela Townsend – Inky

No one saw the tattoo coming. In high school, I was not voted Most Likely To Get Inked. I was not voted Seventeenth Most Likely To Get Inked. No, I was the girl for whom they had to invent a new yearbook category: Most Likely To Attend Seminary. At sleepovers, I squiggled under the covers…

ONE POEM – Mark Saunders

his Superkings fan over
a firm hand grip in sunburst
gilding the bonfire
cherry red

ONE POEM – Mel McMahon

As if by sticking up taut yellow tape
They could control the space
Like some kind of boxing match
Where a ring-side bell
Could take a firm grip of time

THREE POEMS – Liv Aldridge

The tingle of feet in an ice
cold bed is finally enough to get me out
at dusk, all shabby chic

Steelers Country — Travis Dahlke

I convince Landa to be my accomplice as she culls rotten lettuce heads. They let Landa wear a knife on her belt. She has a weak heart and I think destroying crops makes her feel powerful.

ONE POEM – S.M. Tsai

White fabric sagging
Exposed lipsticked mouth
Small exposed mouth screaming
Exposed mouth with nose ring

TWO POEMS – Rachel Bruce

Gravity balances on my shoulders,
tosses back the balls while I wait
for their sandy pop in my palms.
I get lighter by the day.

ONE POEM – Italo Ferrante

the sound of sliced cabbages
shadows painted on the floor
brick façades & blunt gables

a swarm of rats follow a lone woman
wherever she sleepwalks

all bedsheet ladders lead to you

TWO POEMS – Salvatore Difalco

You reached for the branch
without looking at me as I
signalled you to back away,
to veer away from the tree,
where a snake in full makeup
had hit its mark, awaiting a cue.

Cats Don’t Care About Daylight Savings — Samiha Meah

Last night, I dreamt about them again. All moon-faced and lovely and it stirred that familiar ache.

Where Have All the People Gone? Lessons from Russia’s Longest War – Roman Cherevko

Introduction February 2014. Just as Russia was invading and annexing Crimea, the world was watching another case of Putin showing off, also in the Black Sea region: the Winter Olympics in Sochi. So far the most expensive Games on the record, they were meant to demonstrate Russia’s opulence and grandeur, and, of course, to highlight…

Love in the Age of Instant Mashed Potatoes – Anne-Laure White

The first potatoes I loved were the dehydrated shreds sold in cereal box-style cartons at Key Foods. My mother gave them some delicacy, stirring in milk, butter, salt. On holidays her mashed potatoes were perfect, and doted on accordingly. They were adjusted hourly for flavour and texture, refrigerated overnight, and reheated slowly on the day….

FLASH FICTION — Beth Morrow

We’re hit with a waft of espresso. The thunder of grinding coffee beans. The high-pitched hiss of steamed milk. Our wish is granted.

Wood for The Trees — Joanna Garbutt

There is something in her hands. Something in a large Pyrex dish. It is hot, very hot. She nearly drops it on the floor but instead the kitchen work top catches it. The dish itself doesn’t smash. It isn’t a big enough drop for that. She looks down at it, trying to work out what it is.

Bessarabian Days – William Fleeson

A Chisinau bus will teach you the city. The Moldovan capital’s network of these vehicles, and its trolleybuses and marshrutkas – the decrepit minivans, unchanged since Soviet days – could take you anywhere, for nearly nothing. Mostly you paid in physical stress. Riders crammed into spaces meant for people half their size; young mothers loaded…

Garden of Weeds – K.P. Taylor

My mother loved her garden: the Lily of the Nile, the roses, the lemon tree, the hydrangea at her bedroom window. Hydrangeas flower blue or pink depending on your soil – hers were always blue. The weeds, however, she did not love. “A weed is just a flower growing in the wrong place,” she would…

COMFORT FOODS // He becomes my child by Sarah Terkaoui

We pass plates of kawage, kibbeh, moutabal
between us around the semi-circle of table.

The Author’s Version of Events – Charley Barnes

A True Crime Story Which Never Happened I [hereafter known as The Author] have been considering truth and fact. Truth, as something malleable. Fact, as something that influences the changing of truths.[1] The Author has considered this in particular detail in relation to True Crime and the ways in which truth is manipulated here (no,…

ONE POEM — Terence Dooley

Limonero Moon I had a sour thought, as if I bitinto a lemon, and the bitter mistsettled on my naked eye like dewor vinaigrette: the red eye weptand suppurated, pitying itself.I was a thought ungrateful, a thought sharpand zestless, pithy: what had given methe pip? The cloudy juice ran down my cheek. As in your…